In 2010, scientists announced the discovery of a new primate species, the Myanmar Snub-nosed Monkey, which we posted here. At the time, the only known specimen was a carcass. Now, photographs of a group of these monkeys have been taken with a camera trap in the mountains of Kachin state in Burma. Researchers are especially excited to see that this critically endangered species is producing babies. Link -via Geekosystem

(Image credit: FFI/BANCA/PRCF)

First, captive-bred rabbits will be moved to a six-acre enclosure to develop the foraging and burrowing habits needed to survive in the wild while protected from hungry predators. Step by step, the rabbits will move to smaller enclosures while they adjust to the wild, with individual rabbits being released as they become acclimatised.

Newborns will be better-equipped to deal with the wild than their parents raised in captivity, so those pygmies that give birth in the enclosures will have their offspring released before they adapt to human interaction.

Paws’ crossed, the Columbia Basin will soon once more be home to a pile of mini-bunnies.

Link

Image Source (Dan Anderson)

In the early 1800s more than 65 million bison roamed North America, now their numbers have been reduced to approximately 3900. Bison in the U.S. are mostly confined within the perimeter of  Yellowstone National Park but heavy snows in recent years have led them to roam to lower elevations where it is easier to forage for vegetation. Montana farmers fear roaming bison could spread brucellosis, a disease which causes abortion or premature calving, to their livestock though there have been no documented cases of bison to cattle transmission. In response to this concern the State of Montana has developed a bison management plan. Bison entering Montana along Yellowstone’s north boundary would be shot or shipped to slaughter and all bison entering Montana through the park’s west boundary would be tested for brucellosis. Any bison testing positive for the disease would be shot or shipped to slaughter. Currently 400 animals are being held in government-operated pens near Gardiner, Montana.

The  Defenders of Wildlife organization argues that such a lethal approach is unnecessary and has started an online petition to save the Yellowstone bison.

Link

Wong previously served five years in U.S. prison, after being nabbed by an extraordinary international undercover investigation by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service called Operation Chameleon, considered one of the most successful in history.  [You can read about this extraordinary sting operation in last January's National Geographic, in writer Bryan Christy's story, 'The Kingpin".] But Wong’s wife continued to operate the smuggling network while her husband was in prison, and Wong returned to Penang in 2003 to resume his criminal activities. “Nothing can be done to me,” Wong boasted then to an undercover agent. “I could sell a panda — and, nothing. As long as I’m here, I’m safe.”

He was caught this time by an alert airline security officer [Hear! Hear!] who noticed the broken lock on his luggage, and found it to be full of 95 boa constrictors.

The good news is that traffickers are no longer safe from prosecution in Malaysia. Wong was convicted by Malaysian court this week under a new law designed to crack down on the illegal wildlife trade. Link

(Image credit: Mark Leong/National Geographic)

1. Turtles and Snakes

(Image credit: Antara/Ismar Patrizki)

Officials at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, Indonesia saw shipping containers labeled “fresh fruit” bound for Hong Kong this past February. What they found inside were two tons of live reptiles! They seized 25 bags of Chinese rat snakes and 3,492 pig-nosed turtles. Export of these species from Indonesia is not illegal, but is regulated and the exporter apparently wanted to bypass quarantine laws. The snakes and turtles would most likely have been used to make soup and sex-enhancing drugs at their destination, according to officials.

2. Chihuahua

A man traveling from Bulgaria arrived at the Dublin airport after changing planes in Madrid. He looked nervous, so inspectors in Ireland selected him for a spot check. When they x-rayed his hand luggage, the image of a dog showed up. Screeners thought it must be a toy or statue, as the dog was standing up. But when they opened the bag, they found a live chihuahua! The dog had been in a small cage inside the bag throughout the trip. The traveler had planned to give the chihuahua to a friend in Ireland as a gift, but intended to bypass quarantine laws. The dog was seized and placed in quarantine.

3. Fish

The Asian arowana, commonly called the dragon fish, is considered lucky in many Asian cultures. However, the species is on the endangered list and is illegal to sell or import. Some people will pay a thousand dollars for a small specimen, or up to $20,000 for a large adult, which can grow up to two feet long. A 2005 sting operation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service led to the arrest of Andree Gunawan on charges of smuggling and selling endangered wildlife from Indonesia. Gunawan and six other people were also recently indicted in connection with the case.

4. Songbirds

In April of last year, a man named Sony Dong was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport for bringing in live songbirds from Vietnam. Dong had been under investigation for a year after airport official found an abandoned bag containing 18 birds, five of which had died. This time, customs official were waiting for him to arrive on a flight from Vietnam. Observing that Dong had bird droppings on his shoes, they found he had swaddled 14 Vietnamese songbirds in cloth and attached them to his lower legs under his pants. All the birds survived the trip. Dong pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months and ordered to pay $4,000 for the care of the birds.

5. Monkeys

An unnamed man traveling from Lima, Peru to New York City was questioned about the marmoset he had with him. Passengers on his final flight from Florida to New York noticed a monkey had crawled out from under the man’s hat! Officials questioned the man on arrival and seized the monkey. It is not known how the marmoset had escaped detection at the airports in Peru and Florida. In another case, 28-year-old Gypsy Lawson was caught smuggling a rhesus macaque monkey from Thailand into the United States in 2007 by hiding the sedated monkey in her dress and pretending she was pregnant! Lawson and her mother, Fran Ogren, were convicted of violating the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws.

6. Butterflies

(Image credit: Kevork Djansezian)

Smuggled live animals bring lots of money, but even dead species can be profitable if they are endangered and illegal to transport. For many years, Hisayoshi Kojima was king of the smuggled insect business, in which he shipped both live and dead insects both in and out of the US. Unscrupulous butterfly collectors would spend thousands of dollars for a specimen of the rare Queen Alexandra’s birdwing from Papua New Guinea, which can have a wingspan of up to a foot. It is illegal to catch, kill, or import them. But Kojima found a way. It was a deal on the Queen Alexandra butterfly that ended a two-year undercover investigation into Kojima’s illegal insect trade in 2006. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison and fined $38,731.

7. An Entire Zoo

In animal smuggling, the case of Robert Cusack stands head and shoulder above the rest. In 2002, Cusack was arrested as he landed in Los Angeles after a flight from Thailand. Customs Agents were suspicious after a bird of paradise flew out of his luggage. Three more birds were found in the suitcase. They asked Cusack if he had anything else to declare.

“I have monkeys in my pants,” Cusack told the agents.

Cusack was found to have two pygmy slow lorises in his underwear. A further search found 50 rare orchids in his luggage. Cusack’s companion on the flight, Chris Edward Mulloy, was later charged with smuggling two Asian leopard cat cubs in his luggage -four years later, for some reason. Cusack told authorities that the animals had originated in Indonesia, and he was taking them to a wildlife refuge in Costa Rica. Cusack later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 57 days in jail.

8. Fake Holy Water

Warren Maynard was arrested in 2008 as he crossed the US-Candian border in Lewiston, New York near Niagara Falls with a hundred bottles of a clear liquid found by drug-sniffing dogs. The 50-year-old man declared to customs officials that the bottles contained holy water, which he had bought in Canada along with other religious items. However, tests on the liquid found the animal tranquilizer ketamine, a hallucinogenic drug often used in date rape, in 42 of the bottles. Other bottles tested positive for “general narcotics”. Maynard, who lived in Brooklyn at the time, was a citizen of Barbados with permanent residency status in the United States. He was turned over to immigration officials after his arrest.

9. Bushmeat

A report published this month says that the global trade in illegal bushmeat, or meat from exotic wildlife, is stronger than ever. An estimated five tons of it passes through the main Paris airport every week. In June of 2008, researchers observed while travelers were searched after 29 different flights from Africa. Of 134 people searched, 83 were found with livestock or fish, and nine were found carrying bushmeat.

The people with bushmeat had the largest amounts: One passenger had 112 pounds (51 kilos) of bushmeat — and no other luggage. Most of the bushmeat was smoked and arrived as dried carcasses. Some animals were identifiable, though scientists boiled the remains of others and reassembled the skeletons to determine the species.

Experts found 11 types of bushmeat including monkeys, large rats, crocodiles, small antelopes and pangolins, or anteaters. Almost 40 percent were listed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

The exotic species can be found on menus in Paris restaurants, if you know where to look and who to ask. Scientists warn that illegally imported meat may be spoiled or can spread disease.

10. Human Corpse

Gitta Jarant and her daughter Anke Anusic were taken into custody in April of this year after they tried to take the deceased body of Jarant’s husband, 91-year-old Kurt Willi Jarant on a plane to Berlin. They brought the elderly man to the John Lennon Airport in Liverpool in a wheelchair. The women denied that he was dead and said he was just sleeping, although a post-mortem found he had been dead for around twelve hours. The women are suspected of trying to bypass laws governing the shipping of human bodies in order to take the man back to his home in Germany. Jarant and Anusic are free while awaiting trial for failure to report a death.

For strange historical smuggling stories, see: Sneaking Into Auschwitz, Mysterious Chinese Tunnels of the Pacific Northwest, and Escape Maps Hidden In Monopoly Pieces.

We're excited to feature National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore's new book Rare: Portraits of America's Endangered Species over at the Neatorama Spotlight.

Joel has been on a 20-year personal mission to photograph the world's most endangered species. His new book, RARE, presents a multi-year project documenting Earth's vanishing biodiversity. The photographs, needless to say, are exquisite.

The first animal featured, Bryn the Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit, died while Joel was working on the book. She was one of the last two of her species. Shortly afterward, the last of the breed died as well, and the Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit went extinct:

Bryn the pygmy rabbit died in 2008, marking the end of her genetic line. This subpopulation lost its sagebrush habitat as the land was developed for agriculture. Key features of Bryn's genetic material survive in hybrid pygmy rabbits; a breeding and reintroduction program holds out hope for her kind.

In an off-exhibit room at the Oregon Zoo, the staff was quiet, even reverent, as they brought in Bryn. She was one of two Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits left, and since both were old females, this was a solemn occasion.

A keeper placed her gently on my black velvet background, and i began to take photos. I stopped to watch her from time to time, but she didn't move much. She wasn't even scared. Nearly blind, missing half an ear, and with fur falling out onto the cloth, she seemed to have already given up.

The whole experience left me morose and extremely disappointed. We'd done it again, this time by converting sage habitat to agriculture in western Washington. Our photo session was one of the last chances Bryn had to be noticed. She died a few months later, and then Raphaela, the last of the breed, died as well. The Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit is now extinct, a passenger pigeon for the 21st century.

Don't miss this one (particularly the behind the scenes "making of" video clip!)

Links: RARE Feature on Spotlight | RARE Book Official Website | Joel Sartore's Website

P.S. Joel and National Geographic are kind enough to provide 3 copies of RARE, which we will send to commenters with the best comments on the Spotlight post. Visit the RARE Post on Spotlight to leave your comment: Link

Be sure to visit the gallery in Joel's Website for more amazing photographs.

A trendy Santa Monica Sushi Restaurant, funnily enough named “Hump”, was caught selling whale.

The Hump came under fire after allegations surfaced in Tuesday’s New York Times that it had served meat from an endangered sei whale, possibly straight from the trunk of a white Mercedes-Benz.

To provide evidence, federal agents and animal activists had cooperated in a video sting orchestrated by the associate producer of the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove.” …

Teglas said they enlisted two female animal activists — both vegans — and used a tiny video camera to record them as they were served a $600 omakase, or chef’s choice, meal at the Hump. The two activists asked whether they could get whale meat, and a waitress then served eight pieces of what she called “whale,” according to an affidavit provided by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

The activists bagged samples of the meat and slipped them into a purse. The samples were sent to Scott Baker, associate director of the highly regarded Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. Baker determined that the meat was sei whale.

Link (Photo: Al Seib / LA Times)

Otters are fascinating species and the giant otter is no exception. These endangered critters are in serious danger of extinction, but veterinarian Lucy Spelman and other scientists are working to protect them. The process of rescuing these adorable animals is detailed on the Adventures in Climate Change website.

Link Via Discovery News Image by Lucy Spelman

Marine biologist and blogger WhySharksMatter presents the latest in his award-winning "ethical debate" series, showcasing a "hot topic" from the environmental movement, presenting both sides, and asking readers to argue it out in the comments. Since his readership includes scientists, politicians, and leaders from the environmental movement, these discussions are always interesting, and this one is sure to generate some strong opinions.

WhySharksMatter is claiming in this ethical debate that North Atlantic Right Whales, one of the most endangered animals on Earth, are going to go extinct whether or not we help them, and therefore we should stop wasting so much of the environmental movement’s limited resources on protecting them.

“For the sake of this debate, I will concede the following points (i.e. there is no need to debate them any further).

* Right whales are a unique and interesting animal. They, like us, are mammals.

* Without our protection, they will certainly go extinct

* It is undeniably, 100% our fault that they are so endangered in the first place”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whysharksmatter.

Tamarins are considered highly endangered in the wild yet they are an increasingly popular pet amongst those who wish to purchase a NHP (Non-Human Primate).

Do you want to help save the Tamarins? Why not adopt one as a pet? Here’s the pros and cons:

Captive bred Tamarins can be hugely rewarding pets and can form a real bond with their owner that will be cherished for many years. The rewards of owning one can be manifold. The real question is not whether this is the right pet for you. The real question is whether or not you are the right owner.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

I’ve seen some weird animals online, but Webecoist always manages to find new oddities that still blow my mind. The one above is a giant coconut crab. I wonder if they taste any good.

Link